The Electoral Commission (EC) is permitting students and security personnel to transfer their votes from where they registered during the registration exercise to voting centres of their choosing.
This is to allow the security personnel to transfer their votes to voting centres where they may be performing national assignments on election day as well as students who did not register at their places of abode to do so.
The permission is contained in Public Elections Regulations, 2020 (C.I 127), which amended C.I 94 for the 2016.
However, other eligible voters need to show proof of staying in a place for the transfer of votes for not less than 12 months, which will not be applicable this year.
According to the Public Elections Regulations, 2020 CI 127 Regulation 22 (1), a registered voter who before an election is resident for not less than twelve months in a constituency other than that in which the person registered may apply to the returning officer of the constituency where the person is resident for the name to be entered on the transferred voters list of a polling station in that constituency.
Sub-regulation 2, however, makes concession for students and members of the security services on special duties.
It stated that registered students and officers may apply to the returning officer of the constituency where they are resident or ordinarily resident for their names to be entered on the transferred voters list of a polling station in that constituency.
Other voters seeking transfer, according subregulation 3, shall provide physical proof of the new residence in addition to signing a declaration.
An application under subregulation (1) will be as set out in form three of the Schedule and shall be made not less than forty days before the last day of nomination to the constituency where the applicant resides and where the application relates to a nomination.
The application should also not be made forty-two days before Election Day to the constituency where the applicant resides and where the application relates to voting.
Under sub-regulation 5 of CI127, the returning officer shall, on receipt of an application enter the registration details of the applicant in the transferred voters list for the assigned polling station in the constituency where the applicant resides if the returning officer is satisfied that the applicant has met the residency requirement specified under regulation 1.
“Whenever a returning officer enters the name of a person on the transferred voters list, the returning officer shall assign that person to a polling station in the constituency of that person and send a copy of the entry to the returning officer of the constituency where the person whose name has been entered is registered,” the new regulation stated.